Field
Various features relate to wireless communication devices and systems, and more particularly, to methods and apparatuses for determining accurate location of a wireless device.
Background
There is an ongoing need to improve the accuracy of location data for mobile devices. Currently, mobile devices use signals from access points (AP) to determine their locations. In particular, mobile devices use signal strength from several access points (e.g., at least 3 access points) to triangulate their approximate location. However, determining the location of mobile devices by using triangulation based on signals from access points has several drawbacks. First, each access point covers a large area (several miles), which limits the accuracy of the location data. Typically, the larger the coverage area of the access point, the less accurate the location data that is derived from signals from the access point. At best, using access points results in coarse location data. Second, because each access point covers a large area, access points are sparsely deployed. As a result, in certain areas (e.g., rural area) there may be only one access point within communicative reach of a mobile device. In which case, the mobile device cannot determine its exact location based on triangulation because there aren't enough access points. While increasing the number of access points in a given area (i.e., increasing the deployment density of access points in the area) might solve this problem, this approach is not a practical solution because access points are very expensive and consume at lot of power. Moreover, increasing the number of access points in a given area can lead to increase interference between the access points.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved method for determining the location of a mobile device. Ideally, such a method will result in more accurate location data for the mobile device and be more cost effective than installing additional access points.